María Zambrano

Spanish philosopher, essayist and poet born in Vélez,
Malaga in 1904. She was the daughter of the philosopher and educationalist Blas
José Zambrano and she undertook her first studies in Segovia. Later she moved
to Madrid where she studied philosophy and arts, establishing intellectual
contact with Ortega y Gasset, García Morente, Besteiro and Zubiri, among other
intellectuals.

She experienced the political events of
those years first-hand, and this experience led to her first book “Horizonte
del liberalismo” (Horizon of Liberalism) in 1930. She established
friendships with important poets of the time, such as Luis Cernuda, Jorge
Guillén, Emilio Prados and Miguel Hernández.

In January 1939, when the Civil War came
to an end, she left Spain and went to Paris, where she met A. Camus and R. Char.
Later she lived in Mexico, Havana and Rome, evolving with great literary
intensity and writing some of her most emblematic works: “Los sueños y el
tiempo” (Dreams and time), “Persona y democracia” (The person and
democracy), “El hombre y lo divino” (Man and the divine), and “Pensamiento
y poesía” (Thought and poetry). After forty five years in exile she finally
returned to Spain in 1984. Four years later, her work was recognised with the
Prince of Asturias and the Cervantes awards. She died in 1991 in Madrid, where
she had set up residence after her long period of exile.

As a philosopher, María Zambrano combined
the western philosophical tradition: existentialist, phenomenological and
vitalistic, that of Spinoza and that of the Greeks, inspired by Plato’s
thinking. The core of her thought “La razón poética” (Poetic reason) is
a way of learning how to look with soul and calm at an invisible reality, that
remains hidden, but where the answers that give meaning to life are found.

“Poetic thought” seeks to overcome the
abyss between philosophy and poetry. This was the constant main concern of the
author, in whose discourse philosophical reflection and the mystical-poetic
nature of her successes appear to become confused.

She was always aware that being a woman philosopher
at the beginning of the century meant entering a masculine sanctuary. It was in
this sphere that she coined the phrase that summarises her feminist thought:
“It is time for women to enter not only the public, but also the empire of
dignity”. With this phrase she wanted to make it understood that women’s entry
into the public sphere must be preceded by their own authorship.

She was a modern woman who broke with
traditional female customs and who was socially committed to fighting in the
Second Spanish Republic for women’s right to vote. Her life was an ode to
progress and her writings were an aid to the human spirit as they were free of
utilitarian meaning.

For María Zambrano, “we only live when we
transmit something, so that others live differently when they have read it” and
“people write because there are some things that are so true that they cannot
be uttered”, but thought and written.